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Feedback to odon05@hotmail.com. Archiving and downloading is welcome as long as you credit the author. Many thanks to Steff for beta-ing this.

"Seven, do you realise what time it is?"

"Time is irrelevant, Lieutenant Torres. I require your assistance."

"With what?"

"I am experiencing a spiritual crisis."

"A spiritual . . . Kahless! Look Seven, go talk to Chakotay, he's into all that New Age mumbo jumbo."

"I did. That is why I am here."

"I see . . . well no I don't, actually. What's the problem?"

"For some time now, Commander Chakotay has been attempting to persuade me to go on a 'vision quest'. He claimed it would 'give direction to the course of my life', 'provide consolation in times of emotional crisis', 'release the human within the Borg'__"

"And provide a free set of steak knives. Yeah yeah; I've heard all this before, Seven."

"I suspected as much. Eventually, in order to explore my humanity and end the commander's incessant droning, I agreed to join him in a search for my animal guide."

"Well, I hope you had better luck with yours than I had with mine."

"Yes, Chakotay said you were the only person he knew who tried to kill their animal guide. Why?"

"Because it was a bloody tribble! Get on with it, Seven."

"Chakotay took me to his room and laid out a blanket which he called his 'medicine bundle'. I observed no objects of medicinal value but assumed that the blackbird's wing belonged to a creature that had once required such assistance. Chakotay informed me that in earlier times his people had used psychoactive herbs to contact the spirit realm, but were required to terminate this practice during the ancient conflict known as The War on Drugs."

"Therefore in order to simulate this effect Chakotay used a device called an akoonah. However an untimely malfunction of this device forced us to resort to ancient methods; consuming various mushrooms and inhaling the fumes from burning dried leaves, species cannabis sativa. After several minutes of this activity I complained to Chakotay that I was experiencing no apparent effects, but was hampered by an unusual difficulty in elocution and the commander assuming the form of a banjo-playing banana in a tutu. Commander Banana told me to resist the strange urge I was experiencing to dance around the room with flowers in my hair singing Talaxian folk songs, and to concentrate instead on the stone in his medicine bundle."

"So I concentrated on being stoned while Chakotay began to chant:

'A-koo-chee-mojo. We are far from the sacred places of our grandfathers. We are far from the bones of our people. But perhaps there is one powerful being who will embrace this woman and give her the answers she seeks.'"

"I realised then that I was standing in the midst of a windswept desert, barren but for a few insignificant cacti and scraggly mesquite shrubs. Half buried in a dune of abandoned television scripts was a tall wooden pillar carved with totemic figures – a mighty warrior with his intriguing facial structure marked by a large tattoo. At his feet crouched a great bear, savage and untamed, while on his head perched a long-eared lapdog, silent and passive. Around me the wind whistled and howled, it grew louder and louder, it blew through the hole in the warrior's face that was his mouth and I realised there were words in the wind, words that filled my mind and spoke to me from down through the ages."

"'Seven of Nine, what is it you seek?' asked the wooden warrior."

"I replied, 'I seek perfection'."

"The wooden man said, 'It is not perfection that you seek but happiness, as you showed when you rejected the false perfection offered by the Borg Queen. You seek yet fear the solace that another individual can give you, the means by which you are bonded to another yet become not a drone but a unified gestalt, two individuals who are more than the sum of their parts.'"

"And I said, 'I seek such a union with Captain Janeway' and the wooden man replied, 'Do not for she is a false queen. Once I too sought such a union. I joined the strength of the Great Maquis Bear with that of the Starfleet Coffee Beetle but found all life and character development drained from my body until my features became as wood and my personality lifeless as the barren desert in which you now stand. She is but a false Guide, and you must reject her.'"

"So I said, 'And what of the Doctor?' and the wooden man replied, 'The Doctor is a mere chimera, a soulless construct of technology created in the image of Man yet he can only be an imitation of that infinite complexity, the swirling emotions and buried possibilities and endless History of Time that is Man. He is but a Hollow Man, a Stuffed Man, and you should tell him to get stuffed.'"

"'How then can I find happiness?' I asked and he said, 'You shall find happiness through me for I am your Spirit Guide, the one powerful being who will embrace you and give you the answers you seek. You must return to Voyager and find the One Who Stands in the Shadow of the Great Coffee Thirst, concealed yet not diminished by her presence. You must kneel before him, seeking out the One-Eyed Serpent that lies coiled within the Union of Powerful Thighs and draw it from its hiding place with ancient incantations spoken in words of four letters, take it into your hands as you would a child, nurture its growth with gentle caresses until it grows tall and proud like the Purple-Helmeted Warrior. You must bring this warrior into yourself, you must let him plunge his Mighty Spear into the moist cavern of your mouth and draw forth the Great White Essence with loving strokes of your tongue__"

"'I think not,' I interrupted. 'I believe that happiness will be achieved more efficiently by seeking out the Fiery Warrior who Stands in the Shadow of the Tall Handsome Jerk-Off, concealed yet not diminished by his presence. I must enter the Dark Raven Jungle that lies in the Valley of the Smooth Dusky Thighs and gaze unflinching into the Eye That Weeps When it is Most Pleased while the Fiery Warrior seeks out the Axe Mark in the Back of the Bear and licks her wound with gentle caresses moving faster and faster until the Great River gushes forth sweeping us away in its unstoppable torrent, turning and swirling in the Tides of Ecstasy until we are flung gasping onto the gentle shore where we rest in each other's arms, gaining strength for the next stage of our journey down the Never-Ending River of Life.'"

"Then the heavens darkened and the earth shook as the wooden warrior roared with a voice like thunder, 'Listen to me you stuck up Borg, you really think you're going to do The Beast With Two Backs with Turtle-Headed Torres?' and I said, 'Well I'm certainly not going to Eat Corn The Long Way with Janeway's Pet Jellyfish!' whereupon a great convulsion seized the warrior as he tried to form an expression of tremendous outrage but his wooden face cracked under the strain and fell asunder into splinters at my feet which I whittled down into tiny statuettes to present as courting gifts to my Klingon beloved . . . Lieutenant Torres, I wish to ask you a question."

"Uh, yes?"

"What is the real reason you killed your animal guide?"

"Well . . . I guess it was because I realised that Chakotay's New Age mumbo jumbo is just some bullshit he uses to get into women's pants."

"That was my conclusion as well. Please accept this carved statuette as a token of my affection. It shows the Proud Golden Eagle living in harmony with the Fierce Warrior Raven."

"Thank you. Ah Seven, you didn't really carve this out of Chakotay, did you?"

"No, I carved it out of the dream catcher he asked me to hang over my bed; strangely enough I found a tiny camera inside. Commander Chakotay is currently in Sickbay receiving a long and boring lecture from the Doctor on the dangers of illicit drug use. It appears he . . . accidentally fractured several bones during our vision quest."